List Price: $1,070.71
Sale Price: $999.95
Today's Bonus: 7% Off
This is the fifth laptop I've ever had (in the past 10 years) and it's definitely the best one. First of all, it's very lightweight: 3.8 lb with battery (the battery is built-in). The design is something between Macbook Air and Macbook Pro but without those horrible sharp edges, which you could even use to slice bread! Although it's a sleekbook, it comes with all the ports you need: you get three USB 3.0, one Ethernet port, one card reader, and finally one HDMI (I never liked that Thunderbolt port in Macbook Air and some Dell ultrabooks since they are not compatible with most TVs and projectors).
I compared the screen picture quality with Dell XP 13 Ultrabook and Macbook Air 13: it's much better than Dell XPS but slightly worse than Macbook Air (it seems that Apple laptops still have the best screens in the market). By the way, remember that this is 14" (not 14.3" or 14.6") so don't expect the screen to be very larger than Macbook Air 13.3" screen. The keyboard and touchpad are simply as awesome as Macbook's.
One great thing about this laptop is that (unlike both Dell XPS 13 and Macbook Air 13) it doesn't get very hot. This is probably because it comes with a 4th generation Intel CPU, which is designed to be very energy efficient (this is an energy-star laptop).
Another great thing is the sound quality, which is much better than all laptops I've ever had. However, I haven't been able to hear much bass from the beatsaudio subwoofer. Not sure if the bass comes from the speakers or the subwoofer.
This is a 4G-enabled laptop, which has a SIM slot and comes with a T-Mobile SIM card. A few notes about the 2-year free 4G:
1. The laptop supports HSPA+ connection, which is also called 4G and differs from 4G LTE. You get at most around 5Mbps download speed with HSPA+ and more than 15Mbps with 4G LTE.
2. You get only 200MB of free 4G internet per month and once you reach this limit, you won't be able to use the mobile internet unless you wait for the next month to get 200MB more or buy data from T-Mobile (1GB for $25, 3.5GB for $35, 5GB for $50). If you don't charge your account you won't get even a 2G internet. A a regular user, you probably need at least 1GB of data so plan for at least $25/month if you want to use this mobile internet capability.
The only problem I had with this laptop was that the WiFi connection used to disconnect frequently. However, the good news is that this is a driver issue and you can fix it by simply updating your Intel Centrino 2230 driver to the version 16.1.5 recently released by Intel (see the link at the bottom of this review).
If you are a Windows user, this is probably one of the best lightweight laptops in the market. My actual star rating of this laptop is 4.5 (Amazon doesn't support start fractions!)
Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230 page: http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/wireless/cwn-2230
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